Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome and thank you for joining the Q1 Results 2023 conference call of Beiersdorf AG. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jens Geissler, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Natalie. Welcome to Beiersdorf's first quarter earnings call. With me today are Vincent Warnery, our CEO, and Astrid Hermann, our CFO. We will share with you Beiersdorf's results of the first three months of 2023. Due to ad hoc regulations, we already pre-released our main sales figures on April 5th. Before we start, let me make some technical remarks. Throughout today's presentations, all participants will be in listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by question and answer. When you register for Q&A, please remember that there is a limit of two questions per caller. With that, I turn the call over to Vincent.
Thank you, Jens. I would like also to welcome you to today's conference call, and thank you for taking the time to join us. Over the next few minutes, Astrid and I have the pleasure of taking you through our performance in the first quarter. As you are probably already aware from our pre-release at the beginning of April, we had an excellent start to the year and have continued along our successful path. In the past, our performance in the consumer business segment depended heavily on NIVEA's business in Germany and on the success of the La Prairie brand. Yet, alongside NIVEA in Europe and La Prairie, our main drivers now also include NIVEA business in emerging markets and our successful Derma business. Our two-wheel drive has become a four-wheel drive. If one wheel loses some of its grip, the other keeps the vehicle moving.
Our remarkable Q1 results demonstrate this four-wheel drive is working. Our consumer business segment outperformed the market with a broad-based and balanced growth of 14.8%, driven by a strong 18% increase in our NIVEA business, 26.9% in our Derma business, and 7.6% in our healthcare business. Our NIVEA business in Europe and in emerging market, as well as our Derma brands, are showing extremely strong and stable growth, strong enough to compensate for the challenging quarter we had with La Prairie. That's not all. The volume and pricing part of our sales growth was positive throughout the entire consumer business portfolio and despite the difficulties in La Prairie business. These well-balanced pillars and businesses give us greater stability and security in a time of volatility and crisis.
Our tesa business segment managed to increase its sales in Q1 2023 by a moderate +0.9%. The electronics business in China had a slow start, the rest of the portfolio, including automotive, showed good growth rate throughout the quarter. All these achievements culminated in double-digit growth of +12.2% for the group in the 1st quarter. The hard work we have put into transforming NIVEA is beginning to show results. March was actually the best month in the history of our iconic brand. The brand's broad-based growth in all categories is particularly noteworthy. Growth was led by sun, lip, and deo, with double-digit growth also reporting on body and face. We can attribute this growth primarily to pricing, we can also report a positive volume contribution for the entire NIVEA portfolio.
We are seeing upward trends across all regions, with North America leading the way in the body business, emerging markets continuing to outperform, especially in Latin America. Northeast Asia and Europe having double-digit growth and experiencing a strong acceleration in Q1. This European growth is what I would like now to look at in greater detail. We are excited to report a strong acceleration of NIVEA in Europe with a 14.6% growth, driven by a balanced volume and price mix performance. A double-digit jump in such a highly competitive European market is quite extraordinary. Pricing initiatives have yielded positive results, and we have also seen a positive volume contribution in Europe. Moreover, we are happy to share that our most recent price negotiations went well. We have already agreed new prices with the vast majority of retailers.
Our best assortment has performed well, thanks to the good start of the sun season and an ongoing success story in our body category. We are constantly gaining market share in this category and are seeing strong retail sales with the body category up more than 20% in the first quarter. Another growth driver is our innovations. With NIVEA Derma Skin Clear, we have not only entered a new segment in the face cleansing category, but also reached younger consumer, making this launch one of our best ever launches in the skincare market for younger customers. Now I'd like to turn our attention to NIVEA business in China. During the first quarter, we managed to grow our business despite the challenging market conditions caused by the sudden ending of corona lockdowns.
One reason is the premiumization strategy, which is also gaining momentum both on and offline. We are concentrating our resources on driving premium and high margin products. Online, we are placing a strong emphasis on face care, and we have experienced great success with NIVEA LUMINOUS630, which we handle via cross-border e-commerce. As a result of our efforts, our face care market share reached an historic high. Over the past year, we have increased the average selling price in the face care category to EUR 22.8, compared to EUR 4.5 in 2020. At the same time, we are continuing to premiumize our core portfolio in our current product categories, men, face cleansing and body, both on and offline.
Although we have an established business in China, we have had to optimize our portfolio and focus on more premium products, or NIVEA Dual Serum is a prime example of this approach, leading the body category and helping to increase the average selling price by 24% from 2020 to 2022. In summary, we are delighted with the progress we have made in NIVEA business in China. Our premiumization strategy is yielding positive results both on and offline. The momentum in our Derma business with the Eucerin and Aquaphor brands has maintained, and we continue to generate high growth rates. In fact, we once again outperformed the market globally, recording double-digit positive growth of close to 27%. Our success in the Derma business can be attributed to many factors. First, we are continuing to experience high demand in the U.S. for Eucerin and Aquaphor products.
Additionally, our Derma business have developed strongly in emerging markets, such as Latin America, where we see already a fantastic sun season. Furthermore, we also have a good start to the sun season in Europe. We were able to act quickly and have increased our market share and our sales in this region. One of our most successful innovations continues to be Eucerin Thiamidol. Products containing our patented ingredient, Thiamidol, have achieved a remarkable 50% growth in Q1, being thereby one of the main drivers of the total growth. Most recently, we have relaunched and enriched our Eucerin Hyaluron-Filler+ Elasticity range with Thiamidol. This has enabled us to capitalize on the increasing market trends towards anti-aging products. With +29%, the online growth was yet again one of the drivers of our overall growth.
This underscores the importance of our digital strategy and our success in engaging with our customers in the online space. With our La Prairie business, we faced a challenging start to the year due to the low traffic in China after the change in COVID policies at the end of 2022. With the lifting of the zero-COVID policy and travel restrictions, we saw a significant acceleration in retail sales in Hong Kong that started already in January. Shortly after, in February, the brick-and-mortar retail sales in China mainland began to benefit from increased mobility. Finally, the traffic around Hainan picked up sequentially. In March, we already saw a rapid increase in demand. All this good news make us confident about the further development of international travel retail in the remainder of the year.
Supported by strong innovation such as Skin Caviar Harmony, La Prairie will benefit from the normalization of traffic in and out of China. We'll continue to consistently execute our luxury strategy of focusing on strong innovation, refusing to engage in dilutive promotional activities, accelerating our successful online business, and offering our consumers the highest possible level of service in China and around the world. As I said before, with our well-balanced four wheels, the NIVEA business in Europe, the NIVEA business in emerging market, our Derma brands, and La Prairie, we are looking ahead with greater stability. With that, I will hand it over to Astrid to go through the financial performance of our Consumer and tesa businesses in more detail.
Thank you, Vincent. Good morning also from my side. I'm happy to take you through our first quarter results. Let's start with a quick look at the sales figures of the group and by segments. As pre-announced, the consumer business grew organically by 14.8%. At +14.9%, nominal growth is almost on the same level. The tesa business grew organically by 0.9%. Nominal sales were slightly below the previous year's level due to structural effects. In total, the group generated approximately EUR 2.5 billion in the first quarter and achieved organic sales growth of 12.2%. Turning to our regional sales split of the consumer business. Our three main regions, Europe, America, Africa, Asia, Australia, all grew double digits in the first three months of the year.
Europe saw like-for-like growth of +10.8%. Western Europe grew 8.4%, Eastern Europe was even stronger at +20.2% growth compared to the previous year. In both sub-regions, we saw strong positive impact from last year's pricing initiatives. The successful start of the sun season was another driver for our NIVEA and Derma businesses. The Americas, again, were the strongest region in Q1, with organic sales growth of +23.7%. North America's performance continues to be driven by ongoing high demand of our Derma brands, Eucerin and Aquaphor. In addition, NIVEA recorded double-digit growth in the first quarter, led by the very good development of the body category. At +32% organic sales growth, Latin America continues its successful journey in 2023.
The strong performance in the sun and face care categories in NIVEA and in Derma fueled the growth this quarter. Moreover, both businesses continued to gain significant market shares in Latin America. The Africa, Asia, Australia region grew by +13.3%. Vincent already mentioned the difficult conditions around China at the beginning of the year. Strong sales for NIVEA and Derma offset the weaker La Prairie performance in this region. Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and Thailand reported very strong sales in the first quarter. As we have already informed you earlier, tesa's electronics business in China got off to a weak start at the beginning of the year due to lower demand for smartphones and tablets. Looking ahead, however, we are very optimistic that the market will pick up again significantly with the next generation of devices.
Except for China Electronics, all tesa businesses, business areas performed well in the first quarter. The automotive business showed a particularly strong performance in all regions, driving double-digit growth in the quarter. We were able to win new projects based on innovations and thus further expand our business, especially with adhesive solutions for e-mobility. To finish the presentation, let's look at our full year guidance. Due to the strong start of the consumer business, we already increased our sales guidance when we pre-released our Q1 sales on April fifth. Recent trading makes us very confident to reach mid-to high single-digit organic sales growth for the full year while increasing our EBIT margin by 50 basis points in the consumer segment. At tesa, we have kept our full-year sales guidance at mid-single-digit organic sales growth despite a slower first quarter.
We continue to expect the EBIT margin to be slightly below the previous year's level. For the group, this means mid-to high single digit organic sales growth in the full year 2023 while increasing our EBIT margin slightly. Thank you for your attention. Back to Jens, who will start our Q&A session for today.
Thank you. At this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touchtone telephone. Please remember that we have a maximum of two questions per caller. The first question comes from Iain Simpson at Barclays. Good morning, Iain.
Good morning. Thanks, thanks very much and congratulations. Couple of questions from me, if I may. Firstly, when we think about the phasing of La Prairie, you've clearly highlighted very strong exit rates for China in the Q1. Should we think about projecting those rates forwards into Q2? As in, you know, how much of that is just a kind of one-hit boost on reopening, and how much of it is the fact that, you know, consumers' demand has come back and you have easy comps and that actually that probably is the growth rate until the comps normalize? Then the second question, if I may, you've clearly had a good start to the sun care season, in Q1. Certainly, in terms of the weather in London, in April, it's been slightly on the colder side.
How should we think about your sort of expectations to sun care, going through Q2 and, you know, the weather comp in Q2 last year? Was that a fairly normal season, or was it warmer weather than usual? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Iain. On your first question, as I mentioned, you know, we are pretty happy with the retail sales of La Prairie. You see this evolution first from Hong Kong, then China mainland, Hong Kong. Still, we have to absorb, you know, some stocks. I think we'll be pretty clean at the end of March. We are clean with the end of March with the brick-and-mortar business. We still have to absorb some stocks in travel retail. We are still very negative in Korea. You know that there was a change of market conditions for Daigou, we are not willing like other competitors to subsidize, you know, this business. We are losing in Korea.
All in all, we are expecting the start of the turnaround in June. Clearly the very big and much better turnaround in Q3 and Q4. Don't expect a magical Q2. It will be a good one, but clearly the turnaround is starting more at the end of the Q2 than at the beginning. On your second question about sun care, we are, as you rightly say, we are more into the selling phase now. We are preparing the summer. What we can see that in the countries, you know, where we are already in the summer, and especially the southern part of Latin America, we have great results. We have also been lucky enough, you know, to have a great service level.
We have 0 out of stock, and we are ready with a point-of-sale material for all country. So far so good. As you rightly said, you know, the sun season is also linked to the weather forecast. We are pretty positive and optimistic regarding our ability to seize, you know, the sun when it comes on both NIVEA, Eucerin, but also Coppertone.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We move on. Next on the line, we have Kate Rusanova, at UBS. Good morning, Kate.
Good morning, thank you for taking my questions. First of all, I wanted to ask, with the full effect from pricing materializing in Q2 and fast acceleration in China, would it be fair to assume that your growth in Q2 will be at least as good as the one you reported in the first quarter? My second question is on La Prairie. North America was a little bit soft Q4 last year for the brand. I was just wondering if you have seen significant changes in trends in this quarter. Thank you.
On your first question, the Q2 is looking good. The current trading is good, so we might have also a good quarter. We still have two months to go, but obviously, we are pretty optimistic and we. As just answered to Iain, obviously the sun sell-out will also play a key role. All in all, a good prospect for Q2. On La Prairie, what we are seeing, you know, is clearly, as I said, the acceleration of China and we have an ecosystem which is also much more positive. You know, we used to rely only on brick and mortar a few years ago, then we moved to Hainan, and here we have 10 point of sales.
Also, two years ago we started to invest strongly in e-commerce, first with Tmall, then JD.com and in the next months, TikTok. All in all, we believe that we are in the perfect situation to seize, you know, the turnaround of China. What is still remain, you know, complicated is travel retail. Travel retail obviously as we have seen some good back to growth, you know, in the neighboring places from China. The question is will it go also in Europe? Will it go also in America? This is a question that we are all asking ourselves. That's something we are ready also to seize. The second question is the U.S.
You might know that, you know, the way the luxury development is happening in the US is more, you know, having those perfumery channels, you know, like Sephora, like Ulta, opening point of sale in channels that are totally different. Target, of course. In this market, the average price is $20. This is not really where we belong. So we are highly investing on department store, where we have also a very strong relationship. As you might remember, we are the only brand having access to the data, so we are able to do CRM programs with all the clients of those stores, which is a very strong tool, you know, in order to boost the loyalty and increase the size of the basket.
U.S., I would say difficult environment for us, but we will stick to where we are good at, which is, you know, department store, upper end of department store, developing further the loyalty of our consumers.
Okay. We move on. Next in line is Jeremy Fialko at HSBC. Good morning, Jeremy. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking the questions. A couple from me. The first one is if you could talk about what you think the growth rate of your end markets were, either across the different, like, the brand segments of the markets for NIVEA, the markets for Derma in particular. What your degree of outperformance was. I think the second point is that we've gone through this Q1 reporting season. You and all of your peers seem to be reporting numbers that are somewhat better than we'd expected at the beginning of the year.
Maybe you could just give us what your take is, on the overall consumer environment, their spend levels within the category, and how sustainable you think, this consumer environment is or the degree you see a slowdown in subsequent courses. Thanks.
Astrid will take the first question, and I will answer after to your second question.
In terms of growth rates, obviously, I'm not sure whether you are asking, sell-out performance or sell-in. You've seen obviously, the key competitors that have already, you know, published their results. There we certainly are at the very top end of that performance and clearly believe that we're outperforming the market. In terms of sell-out and the market shares we are tracking, we are also seeing very, very strong performance across all of our brands. We are gaining shares very, very broadly.
On your second question, the feeling we have, you know, looking at the last two quarters and you remember we had this question about price sensibility, that we are pretty optimistic. You know, we have been increasing prices, you know, like most of our competitors. The positive things that, you know, it has succeeded in the sense that we increase obviously the value of our brands, but also we increase volumes and all the key categories for us, you know, and not only by the way, skincare, if you look at deodorants also, we see clearly that the price increase was not done at the expense of volume. We are pretty optimistic on the fact that, you know, we have a very sustainable growth in this beauty market.
Obviously, face care remains the top category in growth and also for us, potential of growth. We are, as you might remember, we are very European with our face care business, and we are expanding it across the world. We believe, to answer your question, that the current growth is pretty sustainable. We'll not keep, you know, the double-digit growth of the market that we have seen over the last quarter. I believe that this there is one market which has showed some strong, you know, resilience, you know, facing inflation. This is a beauty market. We are happy to be strongly focusing on this market.
Okay, thanks very much.
Thank you. I can see here next we have, Chris Pitcher at Redburn. Hi, Chris.
Good morning. Thank you very much. A couple of questions, please. Following on slightly from the previous question on pricing, given where we are now with NIVEA, are you more encouraged about the ability to take the product up the premium ladder, not just purely in price, but in terms of more mix? If you were to index NIVEA last year, where do you think you can take the brand to? Secondly, a bit more color on La Prairie. Can you give us an update on how distribution expansion is happening in China in terms of doors, et cetera? Did that pause because of the COVID disruption or is that still on track? Thank you.
Thank you, Chris. I think on your question, yes. I think we have demonstrated the ability of NIVEA to be more premium. You know, the best success ever of NIVEA is the LUMINOUS630 that I was mentioning, and we are selling the product according to the country between EUR 25 and EUR 29. We used to be more depending on products sold at between EUR 5 and EUR 10. Is there a limit to this premiumization? Yes. I think we have absolutely to respect the equity of NIVEA, which is a value for money brand. This is why when the price increase we have done in 2023 are more reasonable in comparison to 2022 also because the ICP increase, the cost of good increase was not as high as 2022.
I think we are looking at that with a lot of scrutiny in order to, not to cross the line and to become too expensive in the eyes of consumers. Regarding, you know, the rest of the portfolio, of course, no limit on La Prairie and Derma. I would say we have also to be sure that we have to connect price to the skin performance we are bringing to the consumer. On your second question about the distribution in China. We have opened in the first quarter of 2023, 10 location out of which five in China.
You remember that one of the change or the development we announced already last time that we want clearly to expand the distribution of La Prairie in China. We are today only in 35 cities in China. We want to be in 42 cities by the end of the year. We want also eventually, so by the end of 2023, we want to be in 100 stores, which is still very small in comparison with our competitors. We believe it's the best way to tackle, you know, the development of the upper class in China.
At the same time also, we are developing, as I said, our approach with e-commerce, so very successful with Tmall, very successful with JD.com. Both, you know, brought new consumers, younger consumer also living in those cities where we had no point of sale. I think the same size of basket, which is also good in terms of efficiency. We will continue to develop those e-retailers. We are also working with TikTok, which is also a new channel for us. All in all, we will deliver what we promised in terms of slow distribution build up in China. This ecosystem combination of brick and mortar, high-end and e-commerce allowing us, you know, to really touch our consumers where they are and where they buy.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. I can see here that Karel Zoete is next. Kepler. Good morning, Karel.
Yes, good morning all. Thanks for taking the question. I've two questions. The first one is on the Chantecaille, which is now part of the organic growth, I think, during the quarter. How did the brand perform organically and then also, if you could look at the U.S. and China performance. The other question is a bit more high level. You see that the Derma businesses are going from strength to strength for a while now. Of course you have the LUMINOUS innovation, but we see similar trends at competitors. Why is, do you think that Derma is now structurally growing at 20% and taking a lot of share within the overall skincare market? Thank you.
Thank you, Karel. On Chantecaille, we are consolidating, you know, Chantecaille for the only for the first two months, huh? We looking at the growth first only the last two months of the quarter, February and March, because we bought the company last year in February. We have a good quarter in terms of retail sales, particularly in the U.S. You know, we are growing high single digits in North America. We are growing strong double digits in Western Europe. We are also doing great job in China cross-border. This is the only place where we are in China, and we are even growing 60%.
We are preparing the launch in the China mainland, and that's something we are doing with the Beiersdorf and La Prairie team. The complexity we have, like many other brands, is Korea. We have a strong decline in Korea, again, because of the change of regulation. We are, again, not willing to subsidize the Daigou in Korea. All in all, it is a negative first last two months of the quarter. We are seeing some good recovery in the months to come because, as I said, retail sales are very positive. What we have done, which was absolutely essential for us also, is to build the right Chantecaille operating model.
We recruited, you know, the all the leaders of the company, starting with the CEO, but also CEO, CFO, HR, marketing and supply. We also achieved an extremely good service level. When we bought the brand, you know, the service level was extremely bad. I think in the first quarter we have 98% service level, which is absolutely essential...
Of course.
To succeed. We are in a positive situation. We are also moving to SAP. We are doing, I would say, all the basics with Chantecaille in order to benefit from the growth of the market and to also expand the distribution of the business. On your second question, that's a great question. You know, it's, I've been managing Derma since seven years. I would say what is driving the strengths of Derma, first, I would say the fact that consumers want to have safe products which are recommended by dermatologists, recommended by pharmacies, you know, and that's obviously the best category for that.
The second element, I think, I think all of us, all the competitors we have in mind, but also Beiersdorf, we did a pretty good job in preserving, you know, the strong equity of our brands, of doing a good job in terms of connection with dermatologists, in terms of also being true with our products. The last thing which we are partially benefiting from is when you come with top innovation and Thiamidol was the top innovation we initiated in 2018. You have an immediate reaction, not only from dermatologists, not only from pharmacists, but also from consumers.
When a consumer, you know, which has found the right product, you know, to deal with his or her acne, his or her atopic skin, his or her dry skin is loyal to the brand and is buying the brand, and you don't need to over-promote the brand to do that. This is, you know, what we are delivering. We are also very lucky in the sense that we still have a lot of wide spaces we want to occupy. As you might remember, we launched the Eucerin in Brazil, in China, we are launching in Poland. We have launched last year Eucerin in the U.S. We have some great projects also in the U.S.
I would say for Derma, particularly for Eucerin Aquaphor, the sky is really the limit.
Hmm. Interesting. Thanks.
Thank you. I can see here next caller is, Olivier Nicolai, Goldman. Olivier, good morning.
Good morning, Vincent, Astrid, and Jens. Thanks a lot. Just a couple of questions very briefly. First of all, on your margin guidance, with a strong Q1, a good trading in Q2 with a rebound in La Prairie, presumably less input cost inflation in H2, is it fair to assume that the gross margin is going to increase quite significantly ahead of EBIT margin? Therefore, are we going to see marketing spend increase ahead of sales this year? That's the first question. Then just second one on NIVEA, you talk a lot about Luminous. I was just wondering, within NIVEA Skincare, what's the proportion of your sales coming from Luminous, Q10, and then the more like mainstream products like NIVEA Soft, for instance. Thank you.
Olivier, I will take your first question regarding margin guidance. Yes, you are right. Our gross margin is looking to be ahead of our overall margin guidance for the year, which we are obviously very happy about. Yes, we continue to very much want to invest in the business and including obviously in advertising and media.
On your question about face care and within face care of Luminous and Q10. Face care is still a small, at least not one of the top categories. You know, the categories like body, like deodorants, are still much bigger. This is obviously the one which is growing the fastest because we are launching face care across the world. Within face care, we have a business which is pretty well spread. We have Luminous, I would say, which is 1/3 of the face care business. We have Q10 that you mentioned, which is also 1/3. We are also having a good momentum on Q10 because we just launched a top product for the eye area, which is flying in Europe.
The third category are more accessible products, you know, which allows us, you know, to be also always accessible. You might remember that in face care, we have a range of product from EUR 25-29 with LUMINOUS630 down to EUR 3, you know, with our essential. Covering also all kind of consumer expectations. Clearly face care is the place we will continue to invest on in order to develop the brand, also to develop the equity of the brand.
That's very clear. Thank you.
Thanks. The last caller here today, Rogério Fujimori of Stifel. Rogério, good morning.
Good morning. I have, thanks for taking my... I have two questions on NIVEA. First one on the very strong growth in North America. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the price versus mix and volume contribution. Was selling in line with sell out, and have you seen any changes in terms of month-on-month and also April in terms of pace of growth in the U.S.? My second question is on NIVEA in China and the impressive ASP gains in the last couple of years. Do you expect ASP to also grow at double-digit rate in 2023, given your innovation pipeline to drive premiumization in China? Thank you.
On your first question about the U.S., I think what we have done in the U.S., we have been refocusing on the right categories. There were some mistakes, you know, for example, to start to try to invest on shower gels, and we have honestly no right to win in shower gels. We are a very small player, so that was a waste of energy. We refocused on body, we refocused on men, and we came with the right mix of innovation of digital marketing activities. We are a brand which is also very strong in the African American community. We are benefiting also from the fact that this is a population which is developing in the U.S.
All in all, you know, a very successful business. The mix volume price is pretty in line with the rest of NIVEA. We go double digit. I would say one third is volume, two third is price. We will continue to invest in the U.S. We are also looking at other opportunities for the brand. As you might imagine, there are many categories in which we could develop the brand, NIVEA. This is something we'll do when, and we have developed, you know, a very sustainable position in the two priority markets, which are body and men. On NIVEA China, I mean, you are asking the right questions.
I think on face. We have done the work, you know, moving to a price, you know, of around EUR 20-EUR 25. I'm not sure we can go much higher. The story on face care is more to be able to offer a regimen to consumers, to be able to complement the star product LUMINOUS630 by, you know, the famous seven products that the Chinese woman is using. The fact that we have R&D center in Shanghai, but also a factory in Shanghai, is helping us developing against this roadmap. On the other categories, clearly we have room for this, what we call this premiumization. You know, we used to be highly represented in cheap personal care offline categories. We want to be much stronger in premium online skincare categories. It means increasing prices.
It means launching new products with a much higher price. It means also stopping existing franchises which are not adding to the equity of the brand. This is what we are going through, and we will continue to do that, again, benefiting from the fact that we have a strong R&D facility in China.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We have a new entry, actually. Mikhail, or what not say, Misha, please go ahead.
Hi, just a quick one from me. You know, Q1 was very strong. You commented on good trading in Q2 so far. There will be a benefit of China reopening starting from June. Is it fair to say that your top line guidance for the full year is somewhat conservative?
Yes.
Very clear. Thank you.
Okay. That was a brief one. We have Rashad Kawan at Morgan Stanley, currently the last caller. Good morning.
Hey, good morning. And thanks gentlemen for taking my question and congrats on the results. Just a quick one from me, if it's on team. Is there any update you can give us on the cash deployment front? I know you've been quite vocal around the pace of discussions you've been having with the Board, so if there's anything, you know, you can share, there, that would be great. Thank you.
We are working with the board, with the supervisory board. We are working with the shareholders. I mean, of course, you will be surprised if I was telling you that we are moving to quarterly dividends, so dividend is not something we'll discuss before next year when we close the year. There are many other discussions we are having on M&A, on the way we can better, you know, use the capital, the cash we have at our disposal. I hope, you know, as I said, to come with news on this area. Especially in the area of M&A, as you know, there are, this is also a very competitive environment. We might be interested in some acquisitions, but we might also not be able to get them.
I hope that, it will, it will come, soon.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. I don't see any new callers here. This actually concludes Beiersdorf's first quarter earnings call. Our next investor relations event will be the six months results call on August the third. We appreciate your interest in Beiersdorf. Thank you and goodbye.